The Empire Dreams td-113

by Warren Murphy

  The camera feed to the New Hampshire network affiliate was rapidly shut down. A half-dozen representatives of the station quickly tackled the panicked-looking weatherman, wrestling the microphone from his frightened grip.

  As the group rolled around in a frantic, grunting pile of arms and legs, Remo continued on.

  He was careful not to stray into range of the many television cameras. A specter in black, he followed the deepest shadows to the rear of the police station.

  There were no reporters here. Several members of the Nashua police department milled anxiously around a dozen or so parked police cruisers. Most of the men in blue were engaged in conversation with one another.

  Although he passed within arm's length of two police officers, neither man saw Remo. He slipped through the police lines and up to the rear brick wall of the building.

  Fingers immediately sought the rough texture of the wall. The instant his sensitive pads brushed the surface, his shoes shot off the ground. A silent wraith, he stole up the side of the police station with impossible swiftness.

  He was up and over the roof ledge seconds later. On his feet the instant he reached the surface, he moved in a swift glide over to the dented ventilator unit.

  It was a curving tin device that jutted like a crooked finger from the pebbled roof surface. There was a wire-mesh grate across the square opening that was meant to prevent birds and squirrels from entering the building below.

  Hard fingers stabbed through the interwoven mesh. Remo peeled the covering back like the top of a tin of sardines. His face was harsh as he deposited the tight curl of wire grating to the cool roof surface.

  A moment later, Remo had melted through the opening, vanishing from the roof. His roiling thoughts were filled with images of death.

  LINUS PAGGET had started screaming for a lawyer the minute the tear gas canister crashed through the stained-glass window of the St. Jude convent. As the police flooded through the smoke-choked chapel-faces covered in masks more menacing than any Star Wars costumer could have envisioned-Linus screamed that he had rights that must not be ignored. He uttered the words while cowering behind the base of the statue of the Virgin Mary, hands clasped in a mockery of supplication atop his greasy head.

  Linus screamed himself hoarse as he was dragged down the rows of empty pews and out into the waiting paddy wagon. Even though his throat was raw, he had screamed as the big truck tore through the press lines to the police station.

  But the screaming had paid off. It was now some three hours after the incident that had caught national attention and Linus Pagget had gotten what he wanted. His court-appointed lawyer had just left his cell.

  His attorney was already formulating a strategy. There was no pleading innocent, as Linus had initially wanted. Dozens of nuns were witness to his depraved acts. And no American outside the White House would be believed when his word was placed against that of a line of wimple-wearing, rosary-clutching witnesses.

  They were going with either an insanity or "drug rage" defense. There was also the possibility that his childhood doctor could be blamed for the antihyperactivity medication he had prescribed in Linus's youth, but that possibility-his lawyer had told him-was a long shot at best.

  No matter what case they presented, Linus knew as he shifted on his uncomfortable cot that he would not receive the kind of justice that would have been dispensed years before. He had committed acts that would have granted him immortal infamy in any other day, so abhorrent were they. And for a moment now, he had been awarded the stature of ignominious celebrity. But by next week, the revulsion of the nation would fade. In a month? No one would remember his name.

  It was only a matter of time before the world forgot all about him. And when they did, he would be paroled.

  For now, Linus would have to sit in his cell.

  He shifted again as he stared at the drab gray wall of the Nashua jail. The cot couldn't have been less comfortable. He jammed a balled fist several times into his cardboard-flat pillow in an attempt to fluff it.

  With a grunt, he rolled over.

  He was startled to find a face staring back into his. Linus jumped back with a start, banging his head on the painted cinder-block wall.

  "Dammit!" he growled, slender fingers grabbing the injured spot at the back of his head. "Who the hell are you?" Linus demanded.

  He failed to note that the cell door was wide open. Nor did he notice the lack of guards in the block. Standing before Pagget, Remo didn't respond. His deep eyes-as cold and limitless as the farthest reaches of space-were locked on the weak brown eyes of Linus Pagget.

  Remo had been struck by the ordinariness of the man lying on the plain jail cot the instant he stepped before the old-fashioned cell. Pagget could have been any thug summoned from central casting for any gritty reality TV show.

  The man was in his late twenties. He had the emaciated mien of a full-time drug or alcohol abuser. Probably both. Bloodshot eyes darted with furtive suspicion around black-rimmed lids. His scraggly blond beard did not match the greasy hair atop his balding head.

  Still on his cot, Linus struggled to a sitting position. His pale features pulled into an injured knot. The wiry stubble of his goatee jutted forward accusingly.

  "I said who the hell are you?" he snapped. Remo's hard face was a block of frozen obsidian. He straightened up, fixing Pagget with a look of pure malice.

  "Death," he replied, voice soft.

  And suddenly, Linus Pagget felt his entire world collapse into the boundless fury of the intruder's dark, accusing eyes.

  Before the criminal could cry out for help, a thick-wristed hand shot forward. In a breathless whisper, night fell on Linus Pagget.

  HE HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING how long he had been out.

  When Linus awoke, he felt something hard against the back of his head. For a minute, he thought he had dreamt the whole thing and that he was leaning against his cell wall. But when he opened his eyes, he found that he was no longer in his cell.

  A chill night wind blew across his prone form. All around, crickets chirped.

  Linus struggled to a sitting position.

  Remo was a few feet away from him, perched atop a chunk of carved granite. He was staring off into the unseeable depths of the night. Somewhere far distant, an owl hooted.

  There were other objects, like the one Remo sat on, lined up beyond him. Their shape was familiar to Linus.

  Twisting sharply, Linus saw that he had been propped up against yet another of the familiar objects.

  Headstones. The stranger from his cell had brought him to a cemetery.

  Linus gulped. "What do you want from me?" he asked, hoarse voice tremulous.

  Remo's answer was a puzzling non sequitur.

  "I was sentenced to die once," Remo said. His gaze remained far off. As if by staring alone, he could peel back the years to view his younger self. "Just like you."

  "Hey, I haven't even been tried yet," Linus insisted.

  The evil smile that cracked the wistful veneer of Remo's face sent an icy frisson up the young man's spine. As quickly as the smile appeared, it scurried off, leaving in its wake the death's skull mask that was Remo's usual expression. Night shadows painted eerie streaks across the sunken patches of his face.

  "I was framed for murder. They strapped me into an electric chair. Believe me, Linus, you don't know fear until you have that done to you."

  Linus wanted to dispute that, but remained mute. He began listening for the sound of police sirens. Hoping their piercing cry would rise up from the deathly still night.

  "I thought the world had ended when they pulled the switch. But it didn't. When I woke up, they'd given me a new face and a new life. I was supposed to rid the world of scum like you."

  At this, Linus felt his head begin to swim. He pushed himself carefully to his feet. Eyes darted to his left. In the far-off distance, the wrought-iron cemetery gate jutted from the crooked earth. Linus inched toward it.

  Remo continued to speak, se
emingly unmindful of what was going on three yards to his left.

  "You ever hear of CURE, Linus?" Remo asked.

  The killer was shocked to be addressed. He sniffled at the cold. "No," he said. He had begun to shake in fear.

  "I'm not surprised. Only a handful of people have. They were the group that was supposed to clean up America. Work outside the Constitution in order to preserve it. They drafted me. And I've been a loyal foot soldier for them, more or less, for a long time now. But I've failed, Linus. You want to know how I know I've failed?"

  When he turned his attention on Pagget, the scrawny young man froze like a deer caught in headlights. He had been attempting to tiptoe away through the damp night grass.

  Linus wheeled, leaning casually against the nearest moss-covered headstone.

  "No," he announced. "Uh, no. Why?"

  "Because in America now, a piece of slime can break into a convent wielding a gun, Linus. He can steal the prescription drugs from convalescing nuns and hold a one-man party for twelve hours straight while police negotiators try to talk him out. He can rape a nun, Linus. He can get a butcher knife from the convent kitchen and hold it to her throat and force himself on her. Then he can carve up her body like a Halloween pumpkin. In the America I was supposed to be preserving, that sort of thing wouldn't happen."

  By this time, Linus could not stop his shaking legs. His ears strained for police sirens.

  Where were they? Didn't they miss him by now? They had to be looking for him.

  "And no one cares." Remo's voice was somewhere else. Lost in the hazy images of days long past. "You know what, Linus? I wish I didn't care. But I do. And even though I've tried, I don't know what to do to stop caring."

  Still sitting atop his stone perch, Remo's head drooped, as if pressed down by both great sadness and awesome responsibility.

  That single moment of intense introspection by his captor was the break Linus Pagget had been waiting for.

  He turned and ran. Ran for all he was worth. His lungs burned. His raw throat bled.

  He ran, and ran, and ran.

  The cemetery gate rose up before him. He grabbed the cold iron with shaking hands. As he shoved it open, slipping on the wet grass, a face appeared on the other side.

  Linus screamed.

  "I can only do what I know is right, Linus," Remo said as he reached through the gates and grabbed the whimpering man by the throat. "But between you and me, I don't think it makes a difference anymore."

  "You don't have to do anything!" Linus pleaded. Remo said not a word. Although it would bring him no satisfaction, the decision had already been made.

  Two hands reached out for the sides of Linus's head.

  The pain was incredible. Brilliant. Blinding. It was a more excruciatingly intense crystallization of sheer agony than Linus Pagget could ever have imagined in his twenty-seven long, but useless years of life. And then it was over.

  The official report would eventually say that Linus Pagget had been spirited from the Nashua Police Station by forces unknown. Whoever had liberated him from his cell possessed equipment that was somehow able to exert hydraulic force of incredible proportions. The bones of his skull had literally been fused into a single, tight mass no larger than a baseball. Somewhere in that tight ball of pulverized calcium phosphate, the evil brain of the late Linus Pagget had been compressed into a gray knot the size of a Ping-Pong ball.

  But even though a machine of incredible force had to have been used to do such a deed, there were no signs of such a killing device, nor of the tracks it would have left near the spot where Linus's body had been found.

  There were many who believed his death was an act of God. But those who had suffered most at his hands, the nuns of St. Jude, did not speculate on the thing that might have brought the man who had terrorized them to his violent end. They merely prayed for Linus Pagget's eternal soul.

  AFTER HE WAS DONE, Remo let the lifeless body drop to the cold earth.

  He felt nothing about what he had just done. In fact, he felt nothing at all. About anything. And the emptiness within him was almost unbearable.

  As he looked down at the body, he shook his head sadly.

  "And another hundred will flood in to take your place," he said, hollow of voice.

  Remo turned from the twisted remains of Linus Pagget. He left the cemetery, intense desolation slowly flooding the gutted pit that was his very being.

  Chapter 3

  The Banque de Richelieu was tucked away between a pair of old brick buildings on a small street between the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Avenue du Maine.

  The bank was just shy of one hundred years old, and most of its architecture and its interior reflected its long history. Beyond the foyer of gleaming marble and polished wood, however, invisible to the eye of the average customer, the old bank had been forced to make some concessions to the modern era.

  There were now motion-sensitive beams that activated a silent alarm. Bulletproof glass had replaced the steel bars at the tellers' cages. Paint bombs set to explode if a single franc was touched improperly were set in bags and vaults and at each teller's drawer.

  The main vault of the Banque de Richelieu was a fortress. The walls were three feet of reinforced steel encased in a tomb of poured concrete. It would have taken two hours of sustained cannon fire directed against a single spot in a side wall of the vault to even crack the facade.

  Today the thickness of the vault didn't matter. Today the massive door was wide open.

  Ordinarily the whirring, remorseless eyes of surveillance cameras scanned the interior of the bank. This afternoon they had been disabled. Every precaution had been taken to ensure that there would be no evidence of what would transpire here today.

  Monsieur d'Ailerons, the manager of the Banque de Richelieu for the past thirty years, had seen the last of his employees through the doors at a little after five that afternoon. When he was alone, clucking and fretting, he had moved nervously about the building, disabling security systems with a quick professionalism.

  He had finished early.

  Taking a seat in a hard-backed chair near the door, Monsieur d'Ailerons waited. Legs crossed sharply, back straight, eyes forward, d'Ailerons was one of those rare people who appeared to be standing at attention even when sitting down.

  He was panting lightly, though not from his exertions. Nerves made his heart and lungs thunder in his chest.

  It didn't take long before he started to wish he had gone through his routine more slowly. He had nothing more to do now but sit. And wait.

  As he studied the front door, Monsieur d'Ailerons drew a precisely folded silk handkerchief from the interior pocket of his impeccably tailored suit bought in a small medium-priced shop on the Rue de la Verriere. Dabbing with slender fingers, he mopped away the sheen of nervous sweat that had formed on his pale, broad forehead.

  The cloth came back drenched. He hadn't realized he was perspiring so much. With a crisp snap of his wrist he replaced the handkerchief in his suit pocket. He checked his Swiss watch.

  It was time-6:00 p.m. sharp.

  Unusual. They were always on time. Perhaps something had happened to them.

  Pushing his small bifocals back up his long nose, Monsieur d'Ailerons allowed himself the hope that they wouldn't arrive after all.

  His hopes were dashed two seconds later when there came a sharp rap of knuckles on the glass at the front door. It was not yet 6:01 p.m. They were still on time.

  A fresh stream of sweat began trickling from beneath his arms. Moving swiftly on short legs, he went to answer the door.

  In the hallway between the two sets of double doors, the banker drew a key from the pocket of his trousers. Reaching up, he quickly unlocked the dead bolt at the top of the door frame. Squatting, he flicked open the hand lock at the door's base.

  He opened the door, stepping back obsequiously. Nils Schatz and his ragged entourage bustled into the ornate entryway of the Banque de Richelieu. The IV renegade didn't
even look at the Frenchman as his group moved into the depths of the bank.

  Rapidly d'Ailerons relocked the doors. He hurried back inside the bank. As expected, the men were waiting for him in his office.

  It was the same procedure they had gone through every time during the past several months of secret meetings. Tonight it would be different, however. Monsieur d'Ailerons need only work up the courage to make it so.

  "Hurry up, d'Ailerons," Nils Schatz demanded impatiently.

  The German was standing in front of d'Ailerons's spotless desk. He held his walking stick in one hand and was tapping it relentlessly on the faded carpeting.

  Schatz's men stood behind him. There were six of them altogether. Four were of Schatz's generation-though like their leader they were in remarkable physical condition. The other pair was much younger. Though concealed mostly by black winter hats, the heads of these two were shaved and spotted with tattoos.

  It had been d'Ailerons who had suggested to Schatz that the young men wear some sort of hats when accompanying the old German on these trips to the bank. After all, they hardly looked like ordinary Banque de Richelieu patrons. Surprisingly Schatz had agreed.

  Ordinarily d'Ailerons would peer disapprovingly down his long nose at such a lowly twosome. But under the circumstances he wouldn't dare. Not considering the company they kept.

  The banker crossed behind his desk and carefully unlocked the long top drawer. He removed a few slips of paper tucked deep in the back and passed them across the desk to Schatz.

  Schatz examined the slips of paper. Bank notes. As good as cash. Withdrawn from several special accounts. This was the way the transactions had been conducted all along. Schatz was holding several hundred thousand dollars in his hands. It was the most he had ever gotten at one time.

  Monsieur d'Ailerons was blinking and swallowing like mad. He wanted to speak-knew he should speak-but no words would come. He twitched and perspired, struggling with how he should broach the subject.

  He finally gave up the thought that he would mention the irregularities to Schatz. Let the others find them. It would be their problem, not his.